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Is it me or does that look like a TJ-08E that was needlessly made ugly externally.

As for going with a slim ODD, I applaud whenever cases do this. This is a must in an ITX form factor IMO, since it's all about saving space. Not so much large ITX cases however, so to each his own. Though I will argue that there is some merit in saying a full size ODD is more practical for someone trying to save money or whatever, HOWEVER, is it not more logical that they may not even use one? Hence I'd rather let the small ODD be wasted space, as opposed to dedicated much more of it to a full sized one. Optical drives are on the decline are they not? Unless this is your only computer in the house, leave ripping to another computer and save money by ditching the ODD. Reply

I agree, Ive just done a build in a TJ08 with a full size optical, three standard HDD, one SSD (and i didnt use the drive cage at all,threw it out), an 11.5" dual fan graphics card, sound card etc, i threw out the silverstone fan and used a TY150, and also a H60 with a silent typhoon doing double duty as a rad cooler and exhaust fan - sounds hot? its not - cant get cpu over 53 degrees no matter what i throw at it, and its virtually silent

Looking over the review makes wonder what on earth they were thinking, its ugly, noisy, wider than the 08 and no little cut out tabs all over the back to aid cable routing - for me that was the star feature of the 08 and theres not one on the 09.

i guess itll attract people that err on the side of caution and dont care if it sounds like an industrial vacuum in the corner of the roomReply

Slot-in slimline drives cost under 40$ shipped on ebay. That's about 20$ more than a regular sized drive. Given that Mini-ITX (outside the world of Atom) is really not the best bang-for-the-buck, I'd consider 20$ more quite reasonable.Reply

I finished building a new computer with this case several days ago and it was definitely more time consuming than typical builds. Looks great, fantastic air flow, and super quiet.

My only gripes are that the front could use a bit of tweaking to optimize the looks, and secondly you cannot use the 120mm fan on the side because the connection to the power supply will be in the way.

Highly recommend to anybody wanting a case they can put on their desktop and run a powerful rig in the smallest space possible.Reply

So since it's mATX, does that mean that the only benefit here is being able to run dual GPU's in a small space? Or perhaps overclocking cpu's to extremes what with being able to run a full sized CPU HS/F.

My overall criticism is that it isn't someone really looking to go small, it's someone that wants all the power, and size being the 2nd priority. Because even making one sacrifice (take your pick, cpu hs/f size, PSU, or losing 2nd graphics card), will yield smaller cases, and more attractive ones at that. There are even some that will hold more drives than this does.Reply

To me, the benefits are obvious. You get more expansion possibilities with mATX, the boards are generally cheaper than ITX, there are more mATX boards to chose from, and you can use standards parts. You end up with a small, powerful build that doesn't require lots of expensive or hard-to-find components. I would love to build a system with this case.Reply

The only gain is expansion with mATX, and sure, more options. Prices are comparable these days. There are also no hard-to-find components. Not these days, everything has been well standardized, and there are many solid options. Sure not as many as full-ATX, but they are enough for even the budget oriented builds. I wish ITX cases would push the envelop in going small. I wish there were more use of flex-ATX PSU. Even those are readily available, and perfectly suitable for a mid-range gaming build. Let alone anything without a discrete graphics solution. It just feels like such a waste seeing oh so many ITX builds with a 40W+ PSU, be it microATX of ATX, that don't even have a mid-range card in it. Considering the high-end GTX 680's are the niche, what's the point of full ATX PSU in an ITX build.

Granted I am not talking about full sized ITX cases such as these, I'm talking about the flip side for those really looking to save on space. There's a lot of ground that can be easily gained. Reply

I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I especially agree that expansion options on MBs are way over rated with two exceptions. I want the option to have a single discrete video card and as much memory as possible. I'll probably go mATX so I can have 32GB of memory. Unfortunately, I will drag along a bunch of useless cruft like pci-x slots, crazy amounts of USB headers and more SATA ports than I can ever possibly use. I can understand that there are plenty of people who want to build an overclocked dual GPU file server server with 6TB of storage with a Blue-ray drive. However, seems like the market should start also look to provide for those that want to build streamlined elegant single purpose machines as well. The only examples of this are HTPC side and it seems time for that level of focus to happen on the desktop.Reply

AMD has a terrible mini-ITX board selection going for both AM3+ and FM2, so if you're looking at AMD you can't really go ITX. There might be a board or two for either of the sockets I just mentioned but they definitely don't have a full lineup there.Reply

Actually overclocking is potentially much better on an mATX board as there's more space for more power phases and so on. Extra DIMM slots, more expandability, enough power phases to overclock higher, etc. Look at what ASUS had to do on their mITX Z77 board to get decent overclocking hardware built into it.Reply

Which was my point. A decent ITX board can handle a decent overclock, what with overclocking being dead simple these days. So the real benefit is above average overclocks, and the lure of expandability, which I contest at being at odds with the typical ITX build. I realize this may be a great mATX case in terms of size and performance, so sorry if this comes off as a rant of the ITX space =P.

I agree. ITX-cases shouldn't cater to the Extreme OC audience or try to steal some workstation customers. ITX was made to be small.

Even the ASrock board regularly achieves 4.5 ghz overclocks on 2500k/3570k cpus, if you look around the web. That will be fine for everyone outside competitive overclockers. As will 16 gigs of RAM.

I have a Q18 with such an oc'ed 2500k cooled by an H80. There's also 16 gigs of RAM, a 512 gig SSD and a GTX 670. And I've been spending much time trying to figure out if I couldn't cram all this into a Q03.Reply

I know Anand has a youtube channel but I've seen mostly phone reviews on there. Why not do video reviews of cases too? I love reading articles, don't get me wrong but often times I love watching a video review more. Reply

As for your comment about the slim optical drive, I think you put too much emphasis on this as a negative. While I agree that the drives themselves are expensive, hard to source and a pain to install, the upsides are so great that any mATX or mITX case that chooses to use a full size bay is at a huge disadvantage. As another poster said, optical is on the way out and if you really need a legacy drive you can take the hit for the slim drive or use another computer for your optical tasks. The only thing I use my optical drive for in the last 5 years is to rip content to my hard drive and this happens less and less each year. I just use an external drive and put it back in storage until I need it again. Not sure why most users would need a percent internal optical anymore.

I'm also not wild about the looks but the front is good enough since they didn't mess it up with any full size bays. I think the best part of this case is that it can take an mATX board. While a mITX board will work for me, mATX can be cheaper, have better overclocking abilities and there are just plain more boards to choose from. The biggest benefit is their ability to use 32GB of memory instead of mITX's 16GB. With memory so inexpensive these days, it is a shame that all motherboards don't offer more ability to handle more memory. Reply

I'll admit I might have been a little harsh on it and that the last thing my optical drive was used for was to play "Jason X" on DVD (I really, really love crap), but forcing you to use a slot-loading drive for aesthetic purposes does make things harder. Standard slimline opticals are easy to track down and reasonably priced, but slot-loaders are much more difficult.Reply

I understand that the plastic faceplate used is for slot loading drives, but the space seen compatible with a standard slimline drive. Can't we just remover the plastic cover and install a trayloading slimline?

The whole point is moot: most sane people that still need an optical drive have forked the money for an external USB 3.0 optical+2.5" combo drive.

The other critics are also weird:-anyone who opts for this case will use modular PSUs from the start,-most MOBOs have ate least one FAN header that can be software controlled-GPUs that need more cooling can and will received extra direct air from the 2 optional 80mm fans

This case has one minor flaw- like every other really small case, its a pain to assemble and one major flaw:IT IS UGLY!!Reply

That's certainly the more conventional pathway for cooling, as it takes advantage of the natural current of heated air to rise......

.....but as ugly as most people here seem to think it is, it's more likely this would be placed under a desk, and that's where a top intake design wins out, since you're less likely to suck up the occasional dust bunny!

I do think that the hard drives will tend to get rather warm, though.Reply

This thing is hideous. It's like a portable dehumidifier. I can't believe Silverstone attached their name to it. Oh how the mighty have fallen. But anyway...

I applaud the slot-in optical. I applaud the front-mounted PSU, though it should be on the floor. And that's all the "nice" I can say about it. So many other SFF cases are available that are miles above this. What the Hell are you thinking, Silverstone? If these things have shipped, recall them. Don't sully your reputation.Reply

I really disagree with publishing this "review" and giving the part the "recommended" seal of approval without knowing the price. This isn't a review, it's a preview and should be labeled as such.

I for one would be fine waiting on reading the review (even if it was done and ready) until the product actually had an MSRP. If Silverstone was leaning on you to publish, you should push back and say that you'll publish once you get an MSRP.Reply

This looks like the perfect case for me: it's nice and compact but I don't have to deal with ITX.* Nice cooling for maybe even CF, and I don't mind noise since I tend to game loudly. As for fans, I'll make sure my nicely-sized mATX board has enough fan headers; shouldn't be too hard. One optical drive is perfect and I don't mind spending a bit extra on it later (might not get it initially though) and will use a cheap external in the meantime (note: a cheap external is around $30 and so the "unbearable" slim drive can easily be mitigated this way).

*ITX boards with wireless built in tend to be expensive and late to the market, and I need a wireless card, but want discrete graphics. As such, ITX is a no-go for me.Reply

I forget the model, but several years ago there was one of the Sugo cases that I thought was so nice I was just looking for some reason to build in it, either in the all aluminum version or the steel-with-an-aluminum-front version.

The main sacrifices SilverStone made with the Sugo SG09 are understandable ones barring one unusual decision. I understand their preference for slot-loading slimline optical drives from an aesthetic perspective, but it increases build cost for the end user and reduces options substantially.

There are some rather obvious errors in your reasoning, at least to me.

First of all, if you are even remotely interested in building a small system, then you are obviously looking at putting the smallest components in there. Having a full height disc player more than doubles, probably triples the volume requirement in the box for what is, in most cases, a completely redundant device in a modern system. So all of a sudden, you go against your requirement of portability and minimalism so you can save a buck on an optical drive? How does that make any sense at all?

I wouldn't be all surprised if most of the builds based on this box will be without a DVD/BR all together. And yes, I am presuming that pretty much all of the builds based on this case will be LAN gaming systems since it is far, far to ugly to have next to your telly in the living room.

And when did PC games come delivered in blu-rays anyway? Pretty much all PC games come on DVD's still, so paying through the nose for a blu-ray player for a LAN box just doesn't make sense. At all.

That's my impression anyway and why I think Silverstone have made the right decision both in slimline form factor and skipping blu-ray's for their gaming systems.Reply

I still think tj08-e is the best matx case. It looks simple, elegant, and is the 2nd smallest or So. You also have the option of using the top 2 Bays and bottom slot for hard drives if you need 3 hdds with a good air cooler. This new offering by silverstone is ambitious but has a few issues where my main concern are the temps for the hard drives. Also i would prefer having more than two hard drive slots than having up to 4ssd slOts. Anyways, i hope to see more matx cases asi feel they are the best of both worlds in terms of size and performance. Unless you need more than two cards and need the extra expansion slots, most users and even the Gamer will have a single gpu, wifi card, and possibly a dedicated audio card. This is just my two cents. Those that disagree i would be happy to hear what you have to say about this. Overall if the desktop market wants to have decent sales on the consumer side of things, they are going to have to make a better effort off releasing more sff parts without the big dip in performance. Reply